How much does the media influence us?

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When i was younger I was totally controlled by what I saw on the cinema and TV screen, im ashamed to admit.
My father didn't hardly talk to me when I was growing up and this may have been the reason but I can't be sure.

I have heard many stories of young men in the sixties all emulating James Dean.
I have heard that men stopped wearing undershirts (vests) because of a certain old movie.Snopes denies it:
http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/gable1.asp

The reason I think it is important is because of scenes like this:
There was a movie 'Save the Last Dance' and there is a very overt scene at the beginning in the cafeteria:

Yes, a few years ago there was a request that Hollywood movies not feature smoking anymore because we want our kids to be healthier.

Now just think about that for a second, how influencial must Hollywood be if we are asking them to not show their main characters smoking?

http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/08/19/cdc-h ... in-movies/

I am not easily influenced by media.

If media focuses on an angle that differs from mine, it doesn't suade me at all, I stand by my opinions and convictions.

I have seen a lot of smoking on TV, and in addition I have two parents and a late grandfather who smoked. Ever since I was in elementary school I was adamant that I would never waste health and money on cigarettes, and at 37 I still never have.


In movies and series they will wear lots of different clothes, and I will also see clothes commercials on TV and in mags, but they never make me want the clothes because those clothes don't appeal to me, I find them boring, and no amount of seeing them changes that for me. There are only three pieces of clothes I have ever seen on TV that appealed to me:
- a sports jumper Joey wore on Friends (I already had something similar because that particular piece of clothing appeals to me; and that wasn't because I was influenced by someone; the only person I knew who had it, was someone I didn't like at all).
- the clothes Punky Brewster wore in the first season of the show.
- and finally I liked the T-shirt worn by Scott in the animated series Mask.

I also like some of Sheldon Cooper's clothes, like the striped T-shirt he wore over a red shirt. As is evident from my liking of Punky Brewster's clothes, it's a style I like, and I wore something similar; a dark grey T-shirt over a striped shirt, before I had even seen that.


Same for commercials: If they're about something I'm not interested in, they won't make me interested either. For instance, I like pizza. Frozen pizzas are very common here, and sometimes new ones come. Often I have seen the new pizza in the shop without having seen any commercials about it, and then I think: "Ah! A new pizza! I'll try that." If I see a commercial about it before I have seen it in the shop, I think "Ah! A new pizza! I will look for that." Either way, I'm interested in trying it because it's a new pizza (unless it's a pizza I clearly won't like).
Same goes for games, DVDs, and anything else.

The midterm elections in the US demonstrates the influence media has on people. The amount of money spent on nasty propaganda the few weeks and days leading up to the elections was beyond obscene, and people who consider themselves "intelligent" would deny that media attack frenzy had any effect on them, but people are deluded by their own egos to believe that last minute splurge of lies and slander had any effect on the outcome of the election. People and organizations who push that particular brand of media pay people to study and analyze just how effective this strategy is in influencing peoples opinions and decisions.

It worked spectacularly!

yeah corporations and politicians dont spend millions of dollars on ads for no reason